Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Henning Berg is to be appointed as the Blackburn manager meaning that the club can finally rid themselves of the ghost of Steve Kean, because today is Halloween - the day we all celebrate the wonderful world of sluts and ghosts. Slutty ghosts? Maybe.

Henning Berg used to play for Blackburn and so this why he wants the job in the first place, because he knows where the stationary cupboard is, where the fire exits are and most of the staff. These are actually three of the four things he put on his CV in order to get the job, with the fourth being 'I'm not Steve Kean'.

Do you remember when Berg used to play for Manchester United? Henning Berg. Ice Berg?!

There are a lot of people who argue that Man City won the league in spite of Roberto Mancini last year and not because of him, and to an extent I'd maybe agree. If Mourinho had been in charge they'd have won the world cup by now. KOMPANY DISAGREES

There are several reports following City's loss to Ajax last week that many players are unhappy with Mancini's tactics - notably Micah Richards who claimed not to understand how a three man defence works. Kompany denies that this is the case and that he doesn't know where these rumours are coming from!

"As much as I set out in my career to be the best footballer, I would expect journalists to want to tell the truth, and do the job for that reason," said Kompany.

"It's part of the game, and I accept that part of the game. I just wonder where the integrity of some journalists stands when they come out with stories with no foundation whatsoever."

Yes. And I expect my journalists and football bloggers to have integrity and tell the truth all the time. Why only the other day I was telling my good friend Batman about that time I had sex with my good friend Batman.......'s sister........'s friend. Phew that was a close one. I wouldn't want to piss off Batman

Despite Manchester United's best attempts to woo Pep Guardiola back from his backpacking trip around Cambodia a simple case of geography may decide his future, and specifically that he doesn't like Manchester.

Pep is rumoured to prefer a move to London as his seemingly inevitable switch to England looms ever nearer, even though Manchester United seem intent on replacing Alex Ferguson with him. United are unlikely to relocate even though most of their fan base is actually in London and so this leaves the ex Barcelona star with a couple of clubs to choose from. Both called Arsenal.

The Spaniard is clearly a very cultured man and often offers players philosophies and new life strategies instead of actual tactics and game plans, and this would suit the gunners because like most philosophy students, they don't actually ever get anything done.

He's basically like one of these expensive restaurants that offers 'food solutions' and sure the food is nice and the atmosphere is pleasant, but you could achieve the same result by having a cheese burger. And it's cheaper as well. You could afford about 5 cheeseburgers. And then spend the rest of the money on beer and gin.

Tuesday, 30 October 2012

It's Halloween! Here is our scary list of 14 players who have terrifying names from last year.

Yohan Cabaye of newt is just one of Newcastle's most frightening players and when added to certain potions can make a man so handsome that other men want to have sex with them. At least that's what my Dad told me that time I saw him in the gay disco.

Carlos Boo-yol has practised his scaring techniques from a young age at the Barcelona academy. There they are not taught how to deliver powerful, loud boos, and are instead encouraged to make short little scary anecdotes that when added together become one all mighty scare! A bit like Love Actually.

Demba Bat first gained his spooky powers when he was bitten by a bat, and then leader when he had cosmetic surgery to make him look more like a bat. The original bat bite was later found to have given him rabies which led into a delirious state and that's why he got the surgery. It's actually quite a sad story.

Eden Hazard, as in HAZARD SIGN, is very hazardous because he can do lots of tricks like in FIFA. BUT IN REAL LIFE

Nikica Hellavic came to Everton's attention when they found him playing in the deepest, darkest, most evil and gruesome stadium and took him away to help lead their demonic front line. Later that year Rangers were demoted to the Third Division. Ha aha ahaa haha

John Terryble is renowned throughout football ghost land as being 'the most terrible racist in all the land'. I could have drawn him as ghost with a pointy hat but I'm not sure that would have been a good idea. Legally, I mean.

Alexandar Killarov is a spoof of the name Kolarov because he kills people or something like that

Charles N'Zombie-a was first found to be in a non-dead state when he actually passed the ball to a team mate in training. Onlookers were astonished as his brain dead state apparently fixed itself, but swiftly after this he went back to hogging the ball, and as it turned out actually overhit the ball to himself the first time.

Leon Oozeman looks like a character from Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and also his name was easy to change into that. I have nothing else to say about him because I don't know what an oozeman would do.

Phil Bones is the most ghoulish of Manchester United's defenders and scares people by revealing his skeleton and playing hit pop songs on his ribs like a xylophone. Sometimes he plays the theme tune from Funny Bones too, and now he has been employed to follow Rio Ferdinand around while he investigates hate crimes and provide mystery music like in LA Noire.

I was pretty pleased with this drawing until I realised how long I spent on it.

Phil Jagielka stabs people and that's Halloween related somehow. I guess stabbing people turns them into ghosts, maybe? Except ghosts aren't real. I'm pretty sure none of the things on here are real actually, except for people who kill others with knives. On that note, Phil Stabielka is the most genuinely threatening and likely of these creatures to occur.

He's meant to be sitting on a church. I don't really know what a ghoul is.

It would be really lazy to make a Manchester United supporting joke here, so I won't.

And there you go! An eery collection of scary footballers. Even better than that - in a couple of days you'll get to see The Fitba Team HALLOWEEN SPECIAL on Copa 90 and relive all of these players AND MORE with some music in the background.

Remember, you shouldn't allow children that come to your house begging for food to have sweeties. You should phone social services immediately and keep the children in your house until they come to collect them. Some say that this counts as kidnapping, but I say that at least they're getting a good Halloween experience.

Rudi Skacel left Hearts the other day because he wasn't getting paid because they are poor and Vladimir Romanov is determined to become the first man to land on the moon in a wheelie bin. Then he got the number 51 shirt at Dundee United, but why is that a thing?

Well, friends, it's because Skacel chose the number to honour the 5-1 defeat of Hibs by his old club and their great rivals, and piss off lots of people in Edinburgh. New manager Peter Houston didn't realise this was the case. Apparently.

“It’s not my style to upset people,” explained Houston. “I said there were a few numbers available and he asked for 51.

“Call me naive but Gary Hooper wears 88 and Victor Wanyama wears 67 and I never thought of 51 being 5-1. Trust me when I say that.

“It’s registered straight away and, once you register it, you can’t go back on it. I apologise to the Hibs fans. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have given him the number. I’m not in the habit of trying to wind people up or noise other clubs up. Hibs are a fantastic club.

That's a pretty good way to permanently wind up thousands of people but I can't help but think it's an unnecessary way to make life difficult for yourself. Football fans are, by the majority, borderline retarded and provoking them like this is akin to poking a bees nest with a stick. If by bees nest you mean being in a night club and by bees you mean stupid football fans with a grudge. Why are there bees in the nightclub? That sounds like a terrible idea, you should get rid of the bees, man. No one wants bees in a nightclub, idiot.

Phil Neville was booked against Liverpool for diving on Sunday and now he feels just terrible about it. WHY PHIL? WHYYYYYYY?!!!

I remember the days when Phil was just that hilarious left back who fouled a Romanian player in the England penalty box, but now he is the Everton captain and in theory far wiser. Not so! From The Mirror:

"It was a stupid thing to do," said the Blues skipper. "I don't often find myself in that position and I thought Daniel Agger was going to take me out."

But I got a good kick up the backside at half-time as I couldn't commit to tackles in the second half. I'll take the rollicking and I won't do it again, that's for sure."

Moyes refused to gloss over Neville's uncharacteristic moment of madness. "I said to him it's completely wrong, you don't do that," he said.

I think it's good that Moyes also told him to wise up, and the regret on Neville's face when he was booked for simulation was classic. It was one of those immediate desperate regrets where you just don't understand the decision you've made. Like when you realise what you've been watching, post-jizz.

During QPR's busy transfer summer they signed a lot of players and one of them was Stephane Mbia who moved from Marseille to join Mark Hughes' team. Even though Hughes didn't really know if he was good, and Mbia thought he was moving to Rangers.

The Cameroon international has admitted that he didn't actually know where he was moving in an interview with L'Equipe:

"The manager knew my name and had seen me in the Champions League, but did not really know whether I was good or not,".

"I thought they were a Scottish club. Marseille needed the money. So I thought why not if it is for their good and mine, but I would never have thought of coming here."

He then went on to talk about how Mark Hughes' training sessions involve no tactics and is basically just them running around and playing football. It sounds pretty fun tbf but probably not conducive to earning points against teams who are far better prepared than they are. Mark Hughes is so over respected at managerial level that the BBC won't even do a newsnight on him

We all know that money can't buy you everything. The Beatles told us that it can't buy you love or a dinosaur but it definitely can buy you a La Liga title, and this is what Mexican richman Carlos Slim wants to do!

The world's richest man has grown tired of the Mexican telecom game and wants to try his hand at a sports team. If anything else, it gives him an excuse to get pissed on Sunday nights.

Atletico Madrid is believed to be the team he wants to buy and with Real Madrid's current debt being so large that it's an actual percentage of Spain's national debt could we be about to witness the wind of change!? Probably not, but it would be nice to have another team challenging at the top of La Liga.

Of course the real reason that players will flock to whatever club he takes over is that they will finally get to work in a nuclear power plant, although Leo Messi will have to shave his sideburns.

Chelsea fans are renowned world wide for their hospitality and that's why they pushed a steward over the ad boards on Sunday! Because they are putting him in hospital! That's what that means right?

I don't really know how this happens, but you can see the bright orange guy lying on his back over the boards, and then a friendly chap comes along and tips him over on to his head. After that all of his orange pals sneak towards him, making sure that no-one notices them and then he sits and holds his knee for a while.

I don't really have anything to say about this other than that I don't know who becomes a steward at a football game. There's a massive clamp down on racism around the UK's football grounds just now and that's good, but I really feel we're missing a big chance to just get rid of all the assholes. It's the assholes who are racist, but who also go up to the cage where the away fans are and tell them to fuck off and spit on them, and it's the assholes who just generally ruin everything. They ruined myspace, Facebook and most importantly of all - Sailor Jerry. WHY DID THEY CHANGE YOU? WHY DID THEY CHANGE?!!!!

Monday, 29 October 2012

"The death of Italian football", is how Catania President described his sides loss to Juventus - but why? Let's read on.

Perhaps this weekend referees all over Europe decided they would be really shit for a laugh. Maybe they are just not very good, or maybe they just made mistakes? In fairness, I'd struggle to do my job with thousands of people calling me a fucking penis or a horses arse and throwing coins at me. In the 26th minute, Catania scored a perfectly good goal. Usually an offside decision takes at the most five seconds to be decided - it took the officials a mighty 45 seconds to rule the goal out. This was after the Juventus players did lots of shouting. I'm not saying the officials were persuaded to change the decision but I'm not, not saying it. Understandably everyone was confused, then confusion led to anger, anger led to hate and hate led to the dark side.

Going back to the initial quote, Italian football died years ago, it died the moment James Richardson stopped sitting outside cafes eating ice cream. Why did you have to do this! We trusted you and this is how you repay us? Damn you, damn you to hell!

Mark Clattenburg had a nice day yesterday. First of all he sent off Fernando Torres for being fouled and then he allowed an offside Manchester United goal, all while allegedly being racist to Juan Mata and John Obi Mikel.

According to former referee Jeff Winter, Clattenburg might not referee ever again following the official complaint by Chelsea about the man in charge of United's 3-2 win. It is alleged that he called Mata a 'Spanish twat' and said something racial about Mikel. Maybe he called him black. Is that racist? I get the feeling that a lot of people think describing someone as black is racist now.... it's kind of a grey area. I DID IT AGAIN!

Anyway, the fact that Chelsea have made an official complaint is pretty serious and if he is found guilty of being racist it is likely the club will have no option other than to fine him two weeks wages and use him as an ambassador for the team once his playing career is finished.

You may remember the FIFA 12 video where Andy Carroll starting trying to hump Iker Casillas in the middle of a game, and well you may for it was great. Now Gerard Pique is feeling frisky

This clip is clearly from when Pique had been out on the piss all night with his girlfriends and Benzema hadn't texted him more than twice, even though he'd only been having a quiet beer with his pals. Later that night they went home and had make up sex, staring into each other's eyes afterwards and then Pique argued about almost anything he could think of, crying several times. In the morning they woke up and Benzema felt weird, but Pique just laughed about how drunk he was and the silly things he'd said, and slowly Benzema crawled further and further into a deep depression that he couldn't tell anyone about.

Barcelona are quite good at football and to get to this high level of sporting prowess you need to practise. You need to practise hard!

Even when messing around with their tiki-taka stuff in training, I still have to pause and 'rewind' bits to understand how they make the little passes. Spain are so far ahead of the rest of the world technically just now that we should all really take note of this and take these training exercises to our native land, or more specifically Scotland, because your other places aren't as important. I can just see Gary Caldwell joining in this training session. The only change we'd probably need to make to this particular exercise is perhaps an ambulance in the background.

When Franck Ribery isn't playing for Bayern Munich or telling people he didn't know she was 17, he's standing in shop windows frightening people

Despite being very famous in the world of football, I'm not sure that everyone in this video will actually know who Franck Ribery is and that's a shame because it means he's just scary to look at. Some say it's mean to suggest that he looks like he fell off the side of an ancient cathedral or that his teeth look like he jammed his mouth into a bowl of chewing gums, and those people would be right. All I'm saying is that if he landed on my hotel balcony using his dragon wings and then blew fire through the window, I'd probably deserve it.

Real Madrid want to buy Gareth Bale and they are prepared to do whatever it takes to get him. As long as that only involves money and swapping players.

It's believed that Mourinho will offer Spurs chairman Daniel Levy £50m plus Fabio Contreau, an iPhone 5, a pug and a Fiat 500. If that doesn't work then he will make fajitas, fajitas are awesome. Bale is currently the best player in the world because he plays in the best league in the world and he runs really, really fast.

It's inevitable that he will leave Spurs soon and Real Madrid will be the likely destination, it's only really English players that are scared to play in other countries. If there was some way to turn the energy of Ronaldo and Bale running into electricity we would probably be able to power 2/3 of the planet until we all die horrifically from a giant meteorite hitting the earth and raising the dinosaurs back from the dead. Without doing any research, I'm pretty sure that's what the Mayans said.

At one point Andy Van Der Meyde was "the next big thing". Then he decided he liked booze, sex and drugs more than football and became shit. Now he's written a book.

This is what he used to look like in a previous life. This is what he looks like now.

Usually a footballer's autobiography is a turgid piece of self-indulgent rabble. Van Dery Meyde's is more than likely self-indulgent but at least he has things other than money to talk about. In his book that is just about to come out, or is out already (I forget), he tells us about his addiction to drugs, booze and some mental stripper he met that destroyed his marriage. Eventually he had to get out of Liverpool because he was going to party himself to death.

Everton paid this twat £30k a week to sit on his every expanding fat arse every weekend and party every night. It's hilarious to read about him having a go at David Moyes for having the audacity to ask him to train. At one point Moyes took him by the throat and thought about killing him, after finally being pushed over the edge. He didn't because that would be murder and murder is bad.

Now trying to turn his life around, Andy is taking his UEFA coaching badges and hoping to return to football. In case you wondered, he still hates David Moyes and thinks Phil Neville is a twat.

Saturday, 27 October 2012

James McFadden was once Scotland's next big thing. Now he's 29 and just signed for Sunderland as a free agent. What happened?

McFadden should be enjoying the best years of his career but instead he's just kind of driven around to different clubs like a gypsy trying to find work. Usually these players end up back at Rangers or Celtic but I suppose signing for Martin O'Neill is the closest thing without actually doing that.

James is perhaps most famous for scoring that goal against France and when he saved the world from pterodactyls last year. That left foot has saved the world more times than you'll ever know. Remember there was talk of an asteroid heading towards Earth a few years ago? Big Jamesy twatted a ball so hard towards the giant rock that he actually altered it's course. Quite soon that left foot might be required to take care of Donald Trump.

There is a country far, far away with giant hopping rats and man-eating dinosaur creatures. A lesser man could be daunted in such a strange land but not Emile Heskey - the new superstar of Australian football.

Australia couldn't be any further away from the UK but it's pretty much Blackpool pleasure beach but hotter. If Del Piero was the bigger name, Heskey is definitely the bigger man and he's made the bigger impact. Emile has now scored four goals in three games, including bicycle kicks and shit. This now makes him the best player in A-League history, just overtaking John Aloisi. - I actually met John Aloisi and told him he was my hero. I don't think he believed me because I was lying.

Heskey used to get abuse for being a "big man" but I've seen those Jacamo adverts and I know that being fat just means you are a real man who enjoys a big night out with the lads. Get it? BIG nights out...you know because they are fat and drink pints. LADS!

Italian football is great, mental fans, dodgy owners and match fixing. Let's have a look.

Silvio Berlusconi has been given a jail sentence for tax evasion and banned from public office for five years. Chances are he will never actually see any time in prison as he will appeal and use super lawyer powers. Silvio has accused the judge of a witch-hunt and thinks that everyone is out go get him. He should probably shut up until after the old "did you or did you not shag an underage prostitute?" trial.

In other news, Napoli are being investigated for match fixing in 2010 - match fixing was all the rage back then and they will probably get a spank on the bottom if found guilty. I can't remember much about 2010 apart from Inception, that film was bad ass. Apart from all the people who insisted on analysing the film to death, "we didn't see the totem fall over, what does it mean?", "an ape just drove a motorbike through a snowstorm, what does it mean?". It was obviously all a dream, he died when Titanic sank you idiots.

Friday, 26 October 2012

In this week's episode we play 'Guess Foo! (tballer) - The Football Guessing Game!' and also we interview Faustino Asprilla. Hopefully you like it and it makes you laugh slightly, and if it does, then it was worth the work.

And if it wasn't, I'm going to enjoy pretending to be really sad from all the YouTube comments we get. People who watch football are really clever!

After 'Serbia-gate' as no-one is calling it, Serbia initially denied any racist goings on in the under 21 game against England but now, having watched a video of it, they've banned two players for a year and two of their staff.

The Serbian FA has banned Nikola Ninkovic and Ognjen Mudrinski for a year from playing for any Serbian national team for their part in the post-match war against England. This is what they said:

"Having reviewed the television footage of the incidents, the FSS disciplinary committee decided to ban Ninkovic and Mudrinski from playing for Serbia at any level for a period of one year.

"Also, staff members Srdjan Maksimovic and Andreja Milutinovic have been banned from their coaching duties at any level for Serbia for two years. All four have violated the FSS ethics and fair-play code."

See that? Videoing stuff is always a good idea. I think we should probably video everything we ever do just incase someone is racist and we have to report it to the police or something. And if that doesn't work, I don't know how else I can explain filming my neighbour getting changed.

Former Newcastle legend Alan Shearer has interviewed for the vacant Ipswich manager's job after the club agreed on mutual termination with Paul Jewell. Of his contract I mean, you can't abort a fully grown man. I think.

Shearer's only managerial experience so far was helping Newcastle get relegated over eight games at the end of the 2009 season, although in fairness to him, he inherited a mess of a squad which had been pritt stick glued together by the departed Keegan and the insane Joe Kinnear. It would have been like trying to build a lego space ship out of melted crayons but either way, he still got them relegated. Now Ipswich fancy hiring the 42 year old and have interviewed him for the position so hopefully any day now we won't have to listen to him on MOTD anymore.

Scotland hero James McFadden's career seems to have already peaked and dipped since he scored THAT goal against France, because now he plays for Sunderland and that sucks.

The former Motherwell, Birmingham and Everton forward has been available on a free transfer since the summer and hasn't played for his country since 2010. Sunderland can now combine him with the mighty Steven Fletcher upfront and hope that somehow he can provide an option other than 'hit it towards Fletcher EVERY TIME' when the team goes forward, but mostly I expect they hope he does this:

So there you go kids. You're fucked. Even if you manage to score one of your country's greatest ever goals, if you get injured even like once you're still going to have to play for Sunderland at some point. It's like finally getting to become a zookeeper and then being told you have to look after the goats. NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE GOATS

TIL you're not allowed to head the ball out of a keeper's hands, because last night Daniel Agger headed the ball out of the goalie's hands in Liverpool's game against Anzhi Makhachkala and it was disallowed.

So the reason this doesn't count anymore is because those sneaky weasels at UEFA or whoever, changed the rule so that once a keeper has two hands on the ball, it means he is 'in possession' and you can't take it off him. Apparently this happened ages ago as well :-( This means no more goals like:

Dion Dublin against Newcastle

Gary Crosby against Man City

This one doesn't really count in this list but it's still funny

I liked those goals and it's a shame we won't get anymore of them because of those corporate fun ruiners! It's fun trying to sneak up on the goalie, and they love it too - especially at night when they are taking their dog for a walk. You just jump out and go 'HA HA I GOT YOU DAVID SEAMAN!' and watch as they roll around the floor clutching their heart from laughing so hard as you run away. There were a lot of ambulances that night. I'm also not 100% sure it was David Seaman. How many people have a moustache and ponytail though? There can't be more than like 10

Thursday, 25 October 2012

MORE RACISM NEWS SPORTS FANS! Today, some people may or may not shake hands, Jason Roberts still hates t-shirts and Quentin Fortune understands Rio's rage.

Jason Roberts has denied claims that he is to join a 'Black Players Union' which is something almost no-one agrees is a good idea. Surely the point of stamping out racism is to treat everyone equally, not segregate? I dunno, I have had it pretty tough as a middle class white male so I have my own problems, but regardless, the BPU, as I'm now calling it, probably isn't happening.

Rio Ferdinand is still really angry about the whole t-shirt thing as well and might not shake Ashley Cole's hand in Man United's upcoming game against Chelsea, even though Ashley is also black. This is because Cole supported John Terry during his racism trial, so now we can see that actually, Rio is very pissed off that his brother had something bad happen to him. In grown up land you can't say 'my brother will do you in' as a threat to someone, and that's why they have courts. Unfortunately courts don't rule in favour of 'death to racists' so Rio must once more don his gladiator uniform and attempt to stamp out racism like the vigilante warrior he is.

The FA meanwhile have drawn up a 6 point plan to try and stop racism, including copying American football's 'Rooney Rule' which means you have to interview at least one minority candidate for any manager job. This is good because at the moment it means that Paul Ince will get to apply for every single managers job in Britain.

I can't wait until this racism stuff is gone because it's really boring. If everyone could just stop being racist, that would be really handy around about now. Unfortunately the people who are racist usually can't read so these immortal words will be lost on them, and if they can read, they read the Daily Mail. So let's just pay for an advert in the Daily Mail that says 'the jews will rule the world unless you all hold your breath underwater for the next 10 minutes'.

Emile Heskey is such big news in Australia that their sports networks now have one camera devoted entirely to watching what Emile Heskey is doing.

Lucky spectators now have the chance to observe Heskey's lightning pace and super human strength, rather than having to sit through an entire game of, what I assume is, terrible football. Del Piero cam I could understand because he's a genius, but this is Emile Heskey. Unless the camera is through his eyes and shows him wrestling bears I don't think I want to watch. Or if they made Heskey Cam an actual channel and showed him making a sandwich and then wrestling bears over the sandwich. Basically I just want to see someone wrestle a bear

FIFA have told goal-line technology firms to hire loads of lawyers incase they get hella sued when/if their products are proven to be incorrect, they don't go out of business. Hmmm.

So clearly it was really just money that FIFA were worried about all along. Guys, you know that these things are controlled by computers? You know those box things you have in your offices? They're slightly more reliable than the troublesome human referee but even still, FIFA officials are scared that if say, Man United were incorrectly denied a goal because a computer got it wrong, they'd be really angry and sue the company. It's a bit different to how it works now where Man United concede a goal and an entire stadium sees it happen, and then the TV replay shows everyone that it was a goal, several times, it gets disallowed and then Spurs just moan about it.

Why hasn't anyone been suing FIFA for not putting in goal line technology yet? I THOUGHT THIS WAS 'MERICA!

Failed fish and chip shop owner, Willie Miller has condemned the state of Scottish football and announced that no club from these lands shall ever again win a European cup. And he's totally right btw

For those of you who aren't familiar with Scottish football (which according to our traffic audience report is about 99%), Willie Miller is one of Aberdeen's greatest ever players, a former manager and more recently a director of football (something like that). He helped the club win a European Cup in 1983 when the mighty Dons beat Real Madrid and when you've finished laughing at that sentence, please remember that this really happened. In real life. Two years before I was born. What sort of cruel joke is that?

Anyway, Miller said this:

“When you look where Real Madrid are in the modern era it just adds lustre to what we achieved back then.

“Real just got stronger down the years to the point where it’s almost impossible for a provincial club such as Aberdeen to win a European tournament.

“Nowadays, reaching the group stage of the Europa League would be a fabulous achievement for any of the other Scottish clubs. But we need to improve quite a bit before we would even suggest that’s a possibility.

So there you go. I'm in two minds as to whether I want Celtic to do well in Europe. I probably should because I'm Scottish, but they want to be Irish and I'm not Irish. Also the more money they get, the less likely it becomes that anyone other than 'own goals' can stop Celtic winning the league every year for the next 4. And then it's just like Israel vs Palestine. Am I right? I have no idea.

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

The Champions League is arguably the very pinnacle of elite football, featuring all of the stars, great managers, fantastic games and incredible come backs. And Gareth Barry.

You may recall that Man City actually won the Premier League last year and that this is a very hard thing to do - the only thing harder would appear to be winning one Champions League game. What makes it even more incredible that City won the league is that they managed to do so despite having James Milner and Gareth Barry in the starting 11 most of the season. It's not that these guys are bad players particularly, it's just that they are so, so, so lame that no-one cares. They are the exact player you immediately sell in Football Manager because they don't have any redeeming skills or special moves and you never miss them. No-one at a party anywhere in the world has ever thought 'aw man I could really use James Milner to turn up right now and liven this place up'. It's like having the money to buy a ferrari and instead spending it on a horse because it did alright for Aston Villa ages ago.

Anyway, Mancini was like 'it's my fault' after City lost 3-1 to Ajax tonight and left themselves with about 0 chance of qualifying for the next round. If this actually was FM, the Italian would immediately have been binned post-match. Micah Richards did an interview afterwards where he moaned about not having played in a formation with 3 defenders before, which will probably make his boss really happy (SARCASM) and isn't really an excuse for a team that cost more than INSERT EXPENSIVE ITEM.

The other thing that confuses me with Mancini is I can't tell if he knows what he's doing or not. His managerial record before City is amazing (won 3 serie-a titles in a row with Inter, took Lazio and Fiorentina to cup wins and Europe with no money) but he doesn't seem to be able to get the team with unlimited funds to even turn up for European nights. And then I remember he keeps playing Gareth Barry. He is the long rectangle in a game of tetris when what you need is a weird z shape.

At the end of the game he had the same tactics my under 15s team used to use: a 3-1-2-4 or something similar. You know when you're playing FIFA and you're very inebriated and your friend goes like 2-1 up and you have to get a goal? And you put all of your players up front? And it never works? Well Mancini got paid about a million pounds tonight doing that. That would buy like.... I dunno.... like 8 beers? I wish I had beer. I really get the impression that Mancini just doesn't know what to do with all that money

American legend Landon Donovan has denied reports that he will go to Everton on loan again, instead he will backpack around Asia. I may have exaggerated.

Donovan has fallen out of love with football because it is full of cunts and he is away from his family too often. Instead he would like to travel the world and spend even more time away from his family. Unless he takes them with him. I once met this weird family staying in a hostel in Malaysia, they were all ginger but even worse than that- the mother insisted on breast feeding her 5 year old child in the communal living room. Why did she have to be Scottish? Our reputation is bad enough.

Hopefully Donovan will get bored of shitty hostels, mosquito bites and awful 17 year olds using literally in every sentence, on their gap year and resign for Everton. I would literally explode with happiness.

Mesut Ozil has lost a court case against Nike who have complained that he broke contract by suddenly starting to wear Adidas boots. How exciting!

Life hasn't been going so well for the midfielder recently - first he didn't win Euro 2012 with Germany, then he lost his place in the Real Madrid side to Luka Modric, and now Nike are blasting him in the ass and forcing him to wear unbranded boots for the next 180 days. The dispute is that Ozil thinks his contract ended in July and started wearing Adidas boots for "no reason", whereas Nike think that's probably not right and that he's still under contract, or something. A judge thought it unlikely he would start wearing Adidas without being compensated monetarily for it and now as punishment he cannot wear any logos on his shoes at all.

And that's pretty much it. At no point in this story did anything explode, nor did anyone have sex. I give it a 4 out of 10

Manchester United aren't very good at defending at the moment because everyone is either old, injured or Michael Carrick. Now they want FIFA star, Angelo Ogbonna to solve their problems.

Ogbonna currently plays for Torino in Italy and according to FIFA is going to be the best defender of all time. If there's one thing I've learned from computer games it's that they are very educational, and if you ever meet a man called Vega who climbs up walls and then tries to attack you, you should just leave. That is valid for both Street Fighter and real life. Don't ever try and attack any grown man who climbs up walls with their claws, shirtless.

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Scott Parker might not play for Spurs again until Christmas according to handsome robot, Andre Villas-Boas.

The England midfielder damaged his achilles and had an operation on it in August but that pesky thing just hasn't heeled yet and it's still giving him pain. AVB reckons England's player of the year will probably be out for about another month or so and won't be back in the first team plans till about Christmas, which is apparently very close. Parker has struggled with the achilles injury for quite a while now and it has somewhat disrupted his excellent form, stopping him from helping drive Spurs up the table. You might even say it's his...... achilles heel